Exploring Internal Resistance in My Writing Process

We don’t procrastinate because we’re lazy. More often than not, we’re exhausted. Or we have internal resistance to a task that is stopping us from simply diving into it.

Internal resistance has a lot of different names. Steven Pressfield, author of The War on Art, shortens it to resistance. It’s also called psychological friction in a lot of research. Here’s a quick definition: “Psychological friction refers to the internal mental resistance that makes a behaviour, decision, or change feel effortful, uncomfortable, or difficult to initiate.”

We all have internal resistance (unfortunately).

Becoming aware of it and unraveling it is a skill of its own. The concept of internal resistance isn’t something I learned in school, or even college. It’s something I learned through going to therapy and from all the psychology books I’ve read in my free time.

Digging into that internal resistance takes work.

“The most common challenge we face when we’re trying to improve our lives is not knowing what to do but following through on what we already know.” — Dr. Seth Gillihan in Mindful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

First, we’ve got to figure out what might be causing the internal resistance. We have to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions.

“Why do I feel such an aversion to this task?”

“Is there something in my history that might be making this feeling of dread more powerful?”

Recently, I’ve been struggling with making time for writing just for the enjoyment of it. If it isn’t for a large-scale project I’ve been working on for years, I would become critical of whether it’s worth my time, even if it’s something I would enjoy.

Internal resistance often comes from past experiences that may not initially seem related.

“Therapists talk a lot about how the past informs the present — how our histories affect the ways we think, feel, and behave and how at some point in our lives, we have to let go of the fantasy of creating a better past. If we don’t accept the notion that there’s no redo, much as we try to get our parents or siblings or partners to fix what happened years ago, our pasts will keep us stuck.” — Dr. Lori Gottlieb in Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

I’m a compulsive workaholic. It’s a frequent topic in therapy for me. One of the wisest psychiatrists I’ve worked with connected my workaholism to my father’s unemployment for nine months of the year when I was growing up. I somehow never made that connection on my own, even in my late twenties.

On one hand, it’s incredibly helpful to learn the reasons for our compulsive behaviors. It is the first step to changing them.

But that’s the hard part — making meaningful change after we’ve identified something that isn’t working in our lives.

My workaholism is deeply at odds with my introspective writing process. I have a brick wall of internal resistance when I think about doing writing that isn’t clean-cut “productive.”

Giving ourselves permission to enjoy things isn’t a one-time permission slip. Just like taking the time to look at why we do certain things and why we resist certain things, we’ve got to be patient with ourselves. We’ve got to give ourselves time to slow down and enjoy things.

What are the stumbling blocks that really stop you in your tracks?

Another facet of dealing with internal resistance, whether it’s with writing or any other task, is noticing the little things that grind you to a halt. Instead of berating yourself for feeling like calling it a day because you accidentally deleted a Google Doc so long ago it can’t be recovered, pause for a moment.

What makes this particular small setback so infuriating?

One stumbling block that I have zero patience for is my technology failing me. I know I need to invest in a good laptop, one that won’t freeze up or run slow if I’m editing photos in PhotoShop for an article I wrote. It’s a small inefficiency I have zero patience for. And it’s also one I can solve just by making sure I purchase something with the right specs and take reasonably good care of it.

Sometimes, we need to surrender to the process, regardless of outcome.

Following that workaholic thread, I can motivate myself to work on things with quick results. It’s so much easier when a task has an immediate outcome that we can enjoy. In those moments, it’s more of a battle of balancing fatigue and rest, rather than poking at internal resistance.

But for those long-term goals that take dedicated effort and won’t bear fruit for months, or even years?

Now there’s a challenge. I initially wrote off my internal resistance as not being motivated enough. But it’s never that simple. We’re all complicated beings with our unique and specific sets of experiences, response patterns, and the coping mechanisms we’ve developed.

Unraveling internal resistance requires getting to know ourselves better.

“Self-care begins with self-knowledge. You have an inner world that is constantly trying to guide you toward a happier, more fulfilling life if only you will listen to it.” — Dr. Lindsay Gibson in Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

Here’s the irony with the “fun” or “reflective” writing and me. It’s precisely the kind of writing that can help me get to know myself better and learn more about where and why I have internal resistance against certain tasks. There’s a huge chicken-or-the-egg-paradox here.

Finding the seeds for our points of internal resistance is a slow process. I’m really grateful that I finally got stable health insurance in my mid-twenties and could start going regularly to have that professional help. Though mental health and writing might seem a world apart sometimes, they’re two parts of life that end up entangled in ways I don’t expect.

Whether your writing struggles or points of internal resistance are similar to mine or very different, there’s so much to be gained by pausing to ask ourselves why we don’t want to do something.